College ball-players face uphill battle

The American Past-Time has undergone heavy scrutiny over the past decade in the midst of the steroid and performance enhancing drug era. Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig cracked down on the players, by smacking a 50 game suspension on any player who fails a drug test for the first time. With players getting stronger, faster, and just overall better at the game, the players in both the Minor Leagues and NCAA athletes face great pressure in making it to the next level. Is it worth going over the line if it means getting to the promise land of the Majors?

“ It is sad to say but growing up watching the baseball era that we did and seeing what it takes to play at that level, it can be very easy for college athletes to step over the boundary,” says former Ithaca College Pitcher Keaton Kovacs.

Kovacs, who coaches an American Legion Baseball Team in Springtown, Pennsylvania, finds it obvious when there is a player who is cheating. There is no testing in the league, so players can get away with murder.

“ Being a player in the league before I was a coach, I remember playing against some of these kids. Returning as a coach and seeing them with an additional 15 pounds of muscle is a little odd. One game when I was looking over the opposition’s lineup card, I had to ask the other team’s coach if one of the players was a relative of a kid I played with. A year of lifting and proper eating could not have gotten the player to the point where he was.”

Even though more professionals are now getting caught, there are ways to go around the system. Fake urine samples and detoxes have saved players from failing tests, and has enabled them to continue to take steroids. According to former Major Leaguer Jose Canseco, who admitted to his steroid use in his famed interview with Mike Wallace on CBS’s 60 Minutes in 2005, claimed that the drugs can be tempting because of their drastic enhancement. 

“ I truly believe, because I've experimented with it for so many years, that it can make an average athlete a super athlete. It can make a super athlete incredible. Just legendary."

Canseco’s statement can certainly strike a nerve to a young player scrapping day in and day out to get that call one day to the big show. It can be crushing to work hard for such long hours and days, practicing the fundamentals and tinkering a swing to get that much better, to end up never getting the call. Because of the long suspensions and the possibility of not only tainting your name but the game of baseball, will players continue to cheat in order to win as an individual?

“Yes, absolutely” says Kovacs. “With the pressure from parents, coaches, and peers, kids are going to look for any edge that they can get to fulfill their potential. The opportunity to cheat is inevitable in this day and age of baseball. It is sad, but it is the way it is.”